


Fighting Chance

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Post-Episode: s01e03 Cygnus Alpha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 15:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18694408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: Avon snorted. "If I were in charge of brainwashing a dissident the first thing I'd erase would be your desire to fight, and the second would be your memories of ever thinking otherwise."





	Fighting Chance

"Where on Earth did you learn to fight like that?"

Their first excursion down to a planet was with no more complicated aim than to buy some recognisably human foodstuffs, but it had either been the wrong planet or the wrong people to trade with and Blake and Avon had unexpectedly been attacked.

Avon stepped over the body - dead rather than unconscious, Blake thought, given the power behind that stiff fingered thrust to the neck- and picked up the dropped knife. "Why did you hesitate?" he demanded.

There had been a moment, Blake knew, a bare second even, but it could have been decisive if Avon hadn't already downed his own attacker at that point. From the man's expression it didn't seem that Avon would let him off without answering.

"I've never been comfortable with physical violence," he said reluctantly.

"Never? And how could you be certain of that?"

For a moment Blake had no idea what Avon could mean. The realisation annoyed him. "They didn't change my personality. Just my memories."

Avon snorted. "If I were in charge of brainwashing a dissident the first thing I'd erase would be your desire to fight, and the second would be your memories of ever thinking otherwise." 

He lifted the bracelet to his mouth again. "Are you asleep or drunk, Vila? This is not a good planet for hanging around and admiring the scenery. "

"All right. Keep your hair on. Teleporting up, I think... Now. "

* * * * * *

"And what about the square root of minus one? Is that a component of your mathematical system?" Avon sounded irritated but that wasn't unusual.

Blake knocked lightly on the door frame of what Avon had taken to calling the computer room, though where the computer might actually be physically situated remained unknown. "Have you got a moment, Avon?"

"I suppose so. Zen, pause session."

"Thanks." There wasn't a second chair so Blake leaned against the faintly glowing wall. 

"You were wrong about what they did to me. I'm certain of what I feel, even if I can't remember everything that has happened to me. But even though I don't like it I can't deny that we might have to get into fights again. I saw you kill an armed man with your bare hands yesterday. I was wondering if you'd consider passing on some of your skills to the rest of the crew."

He had Avon's attention now, though he couldn't read the man's expression. There was a pause.

"To them, no. To you, possibly, if the price is right."

"Why won't you teach them?"

Avon flicked a dismissive hand. "All Jenna and Gan could learn is improved technique. I've no interest in teaching something so mundane - they can pick that up from an education tape. And Vila just needs to become fit enough to run away faster."

"Technique is all I was asking you to show us." Blake said. "What else do you think there is to learn?"

"How not to be a hypocrite," Avon said. "Somehow I doubt that you'll ever pick that up without help."

Blake bit back a sharp response. It seemed that he was being offered what he wanted, however rudely. "All right then. You're on. Provided that I can fight better at the end of it you can call me whatever names you like."

"There is still the matter of the price."

"So what do you want?" What did Avon generally want? Power? Money? Blake's ship? He wasn't getting Liberator for a few hand-to-hand combat lessons, that was certain.

"I want to be taken off that new rota of yours. Completely. I have better things to do that turn up for pointless shifts on the flight deck with nothing to do but listen to Vila's nonsense. I'll be there when I think my presence is useful."

"If I take you off, the others will have to take longer shifts. You're not offering them anything to compensate."

Avon shrugged. "That's my price. Take it or leave it. Zen. Restart session mathematics six."

* * * * * *

"He's spending most of his free time working with Zen." Blake said. "It's more useful to us right now than having him sit a console." If it hadn't been true he would never have agreed to Avon's demand.

"You mean he's decided that he 's not going to waste his time hanging out with the riff-raff." Vila said. "That suits this riff-raff just fine."

Jenna wasn't smiling. "Is he being a problem, Blake?"

"No more so than usual," Blake said. "This isn't just him trying to avoid work, whatever Vila might suspect. He has agreed to do something for me in return."

"Has he, indeed? Lucky you." Jenna's voice was lighter. "I suppose that we can do without him on standard watches if we have to, provided he promises to run like hell to get up here when we actually need him. We're pitifully shorthanded for emergencies."

"He's got a highly developed sense of self preservation," Blake said. "You can be sure that he'll be straight up here if the ship's in any trouble. Gan, any comments?"

Gan shrugged. "As long as he's doing his share I don't care where he does it."

"If there's any problem with that I promise we'll revisit the matter," Blake said. He didn't think it was likely: Avon was clearly the driven type. As long as the ship was a puzzle he'd work far longer hours than any of the rest of them trying to solve it.

* * * * * *

The next iteration of the rota looked rather different. Blake had suggested a regular night shift during which Liberator would be minimally active and they could rely on her automatics to wake them if anything out of the ordinary happened. 

It meant they would be slower getting between places but that hardly mattered at the moment. More importantly it meant that all five of them would be awake at roughly the same times, which Blake felt was crucial if he was ever going to make a real team out of them.

Five minutes after he'd circulated the rota via Zen, the computer spoke abruptly. "Message to Roj Blake from Kerr Avon. My rooms in 15 minutes. End of message."

Blake couldn't help noticing that the others were all looking at him.

"An assignation!" Vila said. "How mysterious. I'm not sure about your taste in mysterious assignees though."

"Work, not socialising," Blake said. "I'll be back shortly."

He considered the small heap of clothes in his room. What did one wear for combat training? For the first time he found he was a little apprehensive. He'd seen Avon in action. It was possible that he could end up with worse that a few bruises. Still, he'd arranged this and he would go through with it. He dug out a tunic and leggings that were moreorless a lightweight version of what he usually wore and dressed  
rapidly.

"Come in."

Blake pressed his palm to the sensor and the door slid open.

He'd glanced inside Avon's quarters a couple of times when he'd twalked past. It looked very like everyone else's, with a bed and some random objects that could be pressed into use as furniture. Now the contents had vanished and there was just an open space about three times as large as the original room. It was a reminder that Avon already knew more about how the alien ship functioned than any of the rest of them did.

Avon stepped forward to stand in front of him. He was wearing a black jumper and trousers, close fitting but thick enough not to be particularly revealing.

"Well, here we are," Blake said. "What should I do first?"

"Hit me."

"All right." He swung a fist and Avon stepped lightly back to avoid it.

"If you're not going to take this seriously you can stop wasting my time."

Blake took a deep breath. This time he shifted onto his front foot as he swung, putting all his considerable weight behind the clenched fist. As Avon moved out of the way his own momentum had him stumbling awkwardly forward.

"Is that the best you can do?"

"If I could do this already I wouldn't need your help," Blake said. "Civilised people generally don't need to know how to brawl."

"You can stay civilised or you can stay alive," Avon said. "Your choice."

"I'm here, aren't I? Show me what I should be doing."

"I could demonstrate but you wouldn't learn much that way." Avon said. "Not yet. Try again."

He had Blake swinging at him around two dozen times more. Four or five of the blows actually made a glancing contact but Avon didn't seem particularly impressed by these partial successes. 

"Is there really any purpose to this?" Blake had stopped for a breather. "I suppose you've proved my deficiencies but you're teaching me nothing. Why don't you at least demonstrate what I should be doing?"

"Very well." Avon stood back and considered him for a moment. Blake balled his fists high in defence but when the attack came it was low to his stomach. As he doubled over, winded and in pain, Avon's hand collided hard with his ear and he went over sideways.

Avon looked down as Blake sprawled on the hard floor. "Now why couldn't you do that?"

"Because I don't know how!" Blake's ear hurt like hell and he was starting to get seriously annoyed with the other man.

"That was a punch to the stomach and a blow to the side of the head. Children fight that way without any tuition. I presume you don't remember scrapping as a boy?"

"That's because I didn't do it," Blake said. "Is that how you learned to fight so well?"

"You think I learned to kill with my bare hands in the school playground? What sort of childhood do you imagine I had?"

"I suppose not school, then " Blake said." But you must have learned somewhere. Was it a hobby?"

"I don't have hobbies," Avon sounded unimpressed at the idea. He offered a hand and Blake pulled himself upwards. "That's enough for today. Same time tomorrow."

* * * * * *

"You look preoccupied," Jenna said quietly as they walked off shift towards the galley.

"I've got a lot to think about, that's all," Blake said.

"Don't let him screw with your head. He tried that with me."

"And did it work?"

"Better than it should have done," she said. "He makes self interest seen like the only logical course of action."

Blake had been shown the treasure room when he got back from Cygnus Alpha and he thought that he had a fair idea of what Jenna was talking about.

He couldn't quite work out however how Avon's self interest accounted for the lesson. There was the rota, of course, but it had occurred to Blake rather late in the day that Avon could simply have refused to do his shifts with exactly the justification that Blake had given to the others.

Avon was already in the galley, reading off a hand console and drinking the stuff from the dispenser that they'd nicknamed coffee for a faint resemblance of colour and none at all of taste.

"Avon." Blake started. "How long until we fully understand the ship?"

Avon glanced up briefly then back to the screen. "It's alien tech. It could take a couple of lifetimes, even for me."

"All right then. How long until we can use the scanners, shields, weapons and engines to full capacity?"

Avon put down the console. "You can do that now, provided that you trust Zen to do exactly what it's told and report the consequences entirely accurately."

Blake sighed. "So how long until we know whether we can trust Zen?"

"Loyalty isn't the sort of thing you can establish from looking at a circuit diagram. You're going to have to find that out the hard way."

"That doesn't just apply to computers," Jenna said.

"No," Avon's smile was brief.

"Then we'll have to figure out how to operate the ship manually until we can be sure where its loyalties lie." Blake said. "Zen's no use to us if we can't rely on it in a crisis."

"And that doesn't just apply to computers either," Jenna said.

"Conscience somewhat belatedly twingeing?" Avon asked.

"I was the one who insisted that we waited," Her voice was sharp. "My conscience is clear."

"It shouldn't be." Avon said. "Did you tell Blake just how close he came to being marooned on Cygnus Alpha?"

"I don't want to know," Blake's interjection was hurried. "Whatever hypothetical discussions you two might have had while you were in control of the ship, all I care about is that you did what was needed to get us back."

Avon raised an eyebrow at him. "With only three followers to start with I suppose you can't afford high standards, or indeed standards at all."

That was uncomfortably close to some of the thoughts that Blake had entertained on the matter. He tried to keep his voice light. "Not everyone is as cynical as you are."

"No," Avon agreed. "Most of them are fools." He stood up. "I need to get back to work."

Jenna moved over to the dispenser as he left. "Do you want me to explain?" Her back was to Blake.

"No. Let's treat this as a fresh start for all of us."

"Even Avon?"

"Even him."

* * * * * *

"Have you got an answer to my question yet?"

"Which question?"

"Why can't you knock me down?"

"You move too fast," Blake said.

"All right. What if I don't move?"

"Then I imagine that I'll hit you," Blake said

"Try it."

Blake looked rather helplessly at the man in front of him. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Unless you change your ways you're never going to hurt anyone." Avon said. "Is that what you're planning, a pacifists' rebellion? The Federation will eat you alive."

"I know that," Blake said with some frustration. "I'm not any sort of pacifist. It's just..."

He tailed off, sighed and swung a fist at Avon's unprotected stomach. He could feel his muscles tense as he did so. By the time he connected it was more of a soft poke than anything else.

"You're in a great deal more discomfort than I am," Avon said. "Don't you think that's curious?"

"No. I think it's the sign of a civilised human being."

"Civilised again." Avon said. "Is that all you want to be?"

"Not really," Blake said. "Obviously we're going to have to fight for our freedom. It's just..." he said again "All right then."

He kicked Avon in the shin.

"Ow!"

"I'm sorry," Blake said hurriedly. "I thought ..."

"Two steps forward and one and three quarters back." Avon said. "Are you going to apologise to Fed troopers?"

"Probably," Blake said. "Does it matter?"

Avon shook his head slightly. " Well, if I'm not going to have permanently bruised shins I suppose I'd better teach you how an adult fights. Watch."

* * * * * *

"Can I ask you something?" Blake said. They were halfway through their fourth lesson and it was niggling at him.

"I can't stop you," Avon said, standing back.

"All right. Out there you've got no time for anything I plan to do. You think it's a waste of time and it will just get me - us- killed."

"I'm so glad you've been listening," Avon said.

"But in here you and I talk about attacking troopers as if it's what I'm going to be doing regularly. Which I am, though hopefully not hand to hand. I just wonder where the cynicism's gone."

"You wanted to learn to fight." Avon said. "I can't teach you that if you don't have at least some motivation to learn, however stupid I think your plans might be. I'm having enough trouble getting through your conditioning to find any aggression at all without trying to talk you out of the only reason you have to change."

"It's not conditioning," Blake insisted. "I'm learning. I couldn't do that if I was brainwashed not to."

"You're learning painfully slowly." Avon said. "Any conditioning can be overcome with enough work, and believe me this is very hard work indeed."

Blake was tempted yet again to ask why Avon was doing it at all but he had started to suspect that the man's reasons might not be entirely logical and he didn't want Avon feeling that he had to retain his reputation by stopping. "What are we doing next?"

"A little close up work, I think," Avon said. "We'll see if you're half as keen on pushing people around physically as you are verbally."

"I'll do my best."

Blake found the rest of that day's lesson rather less stressful than the previous ones. Avon was teaching him a fairly basic way to push someone over and while shoving his shoulder into Avon's chest didn't feel exactly friendly it also didn't feel as violent as hitting him. 

As usual it seemed to take him an inordinately long time to get the moves right.

"No. Get your opponent off balance first. Until then kicking at their feet isn't going to do anything but annoy them."

Avon demonstrated, then offered a hand to help Blake clamber yet again to his feet. He would have made a good teacher, Blake thought, however surprising that might seem.

Blake didn't really get the hang of what he was meant to do that session. Avon didn't seen unduly concerned. "Try again tomorrow."

Not tomorrow, if Blake had anything to do with things. He had his eye on a destination close to their current position, but he wasn't quite ready yet to discuss it with the others. With any luck they'd be doing something for real. Lessons would wait.

* * * * * *

"We did brilliantly. You all did brilliantly." Blake waved an expansive hand at his crew.

No one except Vila knew where the thief had found the bottle of spirits but it seemed only right to have a drink to celebrate their success on Saurian Major, and another to welcome their newest crew member. After that it had seemed a shame to just stop.

'We were lucky." Avon was still on his second glass and less fulsome. "We may never be lucky again."

"We were good!" Blake insisted. "Did Jenna tell you how I tackled that creature? Just as you taught me."

"Really? This I must see. Zen," Avon said into the air. "Show us the internal footage of the destruction of the last Guardian."

A screen appeared on the wall of the gallery. There was the thing like a man approaching Jenna' s unguarded back, weapon raised.

And there was Blake, charging through the door. He crashed into the creature, knocking it into the open wiring where it convulsed and died.

"Well,' Avon said. "At least you ran the right way, which is something."

Jenna glared at Avon. "Blake's no coward."

"Indeed not." Avon said. "You can rely on him to lead you into battle valiantly against overwhelming odds. Whether he does anything useful when he gets there, however, will rather depend on how much of the Federation conditioning I can manage to scrub out of his brain."

Blake had told the others that Avon was teaching him close combat skills. He hadn't mentioned Avon's theory about the brainwashing, mainly because he thought it was nonsense.

He looked around to see doubt on three faces and confusion on the fourth. This wouldn't do.

"I'm not conditioned," he said. "I just don't like hitting people unless I have to."

"Isn't that what brainwashing does?" Gan asked. "I mean, they stopped me fighting. Why wouldn't they have done the same to you?"

"I can show you that I can fight," Blake said indignantly. "If Avon will oblige?"

"You can't lay a finger on me sober," Avon said. "What makes you think you can beat me drunk?"

"I don't expect to beat you. I only want to show them that you're talking crap."

"Very well," Avon said. "Give us some room."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Vila had already backed up as far as he could go. "I mean you could just settle this over a nice quiet game of chess."

"It's just a demonstration," Blake was unbuckling his belt to strip off his tunic.

"A demonstration of what exactly?" Jenna did not look impressed.

"Avon claims I've been brainwashed into non-violence." Blake said. "I don't know how much it will take to prove him wrong but I can at least show you lot that he's talking nonsense."

"And what about you?" she demanded of Avon, who was clearing the chairs away to make a space. "Why are you humouring him?"

"Blake didn't so much as point a gun on Saurian Major, and killing that thing was clearly an accident. He thinks he's unaffected by what was done to him. I disagree. The rest of you might as well find out now which of us is right, before your lives depend on it. "

"I don't know any of you." Cally said. "I don't claim to understand what's going on here. But I said I'd stay because you were fighting the Federation. If your leader isn't capable of doing that then I want to know."

They could lose their new recruit straight after finding her. What the hell had Avon intended by bringing up his stupid theory now of all times? It felt to Blake like deliberate sabotage. Though maybe it was more simply an attempt to show off in front of Cally. Avon was bound to win the fight, after all.

He glared across at his opponent. "I suppose this is your idea of fun. Let's get it done."

"It was your idea, not mine." Avon shrugged out of his jacket but left the tunic underneath. He moved into the open space and Blake reluctantly came to face him.

After a few seconds silence Avon lifted an eyebrow. "Your move, if you have one. My abilities aren't in question here."

It was just Avon. They'd sparred enough over the past few days. Blake tried to block out thoughts of their silent audience and to overcome his resistance. He came forward, fist raised, and Avon slid effortlessly out of the way.

"Try moving a little faster," Avon suggested. "Or is there something stopping you?"

Blake lunged faster. Avon dodged around him and kicked him in the back of his leg. "Still far too slow. You could be dead by now."

Again and again Blake tried to do something of what he'd been taught and picked up only bruises of his own to show for it. Avon was grinning now as he inflicted painful kicks and punches, never the sort of knock out blows that Blake knew he was capable of. He was being played and he grew more and more angry.

"If that's all you've got, I think my point has been easily proven," Avon said. He was barely breathing any faster than usual. "You can't do this. They neutered you."

That smile was the last straw. Blake lunged forward and grabbed a handful of his tunic at the shoulder in his left hand. His right landed squarely in Avon's stomach for the first time, and again, and again.

Avon twisted out of his grip and shoved him hard in the chest with both hands. As Blake reeled back he pushed again, hard enough to put him down on the ground. Blake started to scramble to his feet and Avon went round him and shoved him down again, face down this time. A heavy weight on his back pinned the struggling man to the ground.

-Enough, A voice was in his ear. - Blake. Enough. Stop now. .

Blake registered nothing but the faint tone of the hated voice over the explosion in his head. He kept fighting to get free as the voices talked

-What have you done to him?

-What he asked me to. I taught him to fight.

-But look at him!

-Breaking conditioning comes at a cost. He'll get over it. I'll watch him till then.

-Wouldn't it be better if one of us did it?

-By all means, if you want to. Which of you can defend yourselves from him without doing him any harm?

Silence.

-Doesn't he need restraints or something?

-I imagine he had enough of those on Earth. It's not likely to help now. Just leave us to it. You can get updates from Zen.

Silence

-Zen. Close all the doors to this room. Blake? Can you understand me?

He shook all over in a helpless attempt to get at the the voice .

-I'm going to let you up now. Try not to attack me. It won't go well.

The weight on Blake's back lifted but the pounding in his head didn't ease. He got up to his knees, saw the enemy and scrambled into a charge.

Within a couple of seconds his outstretched arm was twisted up behind his back and his face pushed into the wall.

-So much for reason. It looks like this is going to be a long night for both of us.

* * * * * *

Blake stood in the middle of the room. His legs were shaking, his head was full of confusion, there was someone in front of him and he didn't know what to do.

"Blake?"

Avon. That was Avon. Blake felt an urge to do... something, then the confusion closed in again.

"Blake? Are you back with us again?"

"Everything hurts."

"You'll just have to put up with that for now. I'm not allowing you anywhere near an alien med unit in this state. Hell knows what its idea of fixing a human mind might consist of."

"I'm so tired." Blake said. He felt exhaustion in every muscle.

"Sleep's a better idea. Can you walk?"

Not on his own, but with assistance he got as far as a bed and oblivion.

* * * * * *

He opened his eyes to a dimmed night light.

"Roj Blake is now conscious." Zen's loud voice tore through his head and he winced. "What the hell?"

"Sorry about that." Avon stood up from the armchair, stretching. "I needed sleep as well and it wouldn't do to have you wandering around unchaperoned. How do you feel now?"

"Awful. What did you do to me?" He sat up in bed, still bare chested.

"That practice sparring was getting us nowhere so I had to find another way to push past your conditioning. Fortunately alcohol makes you noticeably more belligerent, something that you'd doubtless been induced to forget along with the rest of it."

"I hit you." Blake was starting to remember.

"Eventually, yes. And, to your credit, quite hard. Could you do it again? "

"I could and given half a chance, I probably will," Blake said. "You're an utter bastard, you know. Did you have any idea of what you were doing?"

"My research on deconditioning suggests that subjects can react very differently. You could have experienced nothing untoward or you could have gone permanently mad, or comatose. Or you could have stayed conditioned regardless of what I did."

Avon sighed. "There's also a good chance that aggression wasn't the only thing they played with. You're not necessarily free of it all yet, "

"So you risked my sanity for a partial result?"

He really had been brainwashed. He felt quite differently now. He also felt sore all over, had the mother of all headaches and was embarrassed at the scene they must have presented to the others.

"You'd rather have stayed harmless?" Avon asked.

"I'd rather not have been experimented on." He started to climb, careful not to jar his head too much, out of what appeared to be Avon's bed.

"The Feds did the experimenting. You had a choice. Stay that way or risk the consequences."

"Except that I don't recall being offered a choice."

"You wanted to learn to fight. I took that as a vote for deconditioning."

"Huh," Blake said and closed the shower room door behind him.

He emerged a long time later, in Avon's dressing gown and somewhat revived. The aches and bruises had eased up and his headache was slowly fading. Avon was back in the armchair, reading.

"So why did you do any of that?" Blake asked, sitting down on the bed.

Avon's frown looked genuine. "We just discussed that. Is your memory playing up?"

"Why did *you* do it, Avon? When I came to ask you about training why didn't you just say no? And don't tell me it was the rota. You could have opted out of that any time."

Avon looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. "They had you in chains and you didn't even know it. You were charging around vowing to conquer the galaxy but it was obvious that you were going to die the first time you got into a serious fight. It was pitiful. I thought it might be an interesting challenge to have a crack at breaking that conditioning before it killed you."

"You were sorry for me." Blake said flatly.

"Let's say that I was unwilling to sit back and watch a rather vicious Federation scheme play out as intended when foiling it would cost me no more than a little time and effort."

"Thank you." Blake said a little awkwardly.

"It will make no difference in the long run. If you go up against the Federation then you and all your acolytes will die. I take a very small amount of satisfaction in knowing that you now have the chance to take a few more of the Feds with you. That's all."

"I don't intend to take just a few of them," Blake said, "and I don't intend to die. I intend to matter, which means that what you did also mattered."

"Hero of the Revolution First Class?" Avon 's mouth had settled in that familiar cynical smile. "In that case I've done my share. You can post my medal to whatever luxury planet I've settled down on when you've finished conquering Earth."

"Whether you're with me or not is up to you," Blake said. "I'll still be grateful for this either way. As soon as we're pressing medals l'll make sure you get one."

Avon laughed at that. "I imagine that you and I will have fallen out permanently long before then. The others have been asking after you with some urgency - are you up to finding suitable clothes for the flight deck?"

"I should think so. I"ll meet you up there." Blake turned at the door. "One last thing - where *did* you learn to fight like that?"

Avon considered him for a moment. "My father taught me," he said finally. "He had specific plans for my future. I had other ideas. Needless to say, neither of us imagined that future would be spent as a criminal on the run. Still, it's coming in a great deal more useful than I imagined."

It was so tempting to ask for the rest of the story but Blake could see from his face that was all he was going to get. "You could keep teaching me," he suggested instead. "I imagine I'll learn rather faster now."

"I'm not a drill instructor," Avon said.

"You're not the sort of man to leave a job half done either."

"Go away and put some clothes on," Avon said. "You could safely visit the med unit first. Then you have some explanations to make if you want to keep your sheeplings on board."

That wasn't a no. Blake nodded. "See you on the flight deck."

He could use this as a rallying cry. His people could do with all of those that he could deliver. The med unit would wait. Still hobbling a little, he made his way back to his room, rehearsing his call to arms. Behind him Avon's door slid quietly shut.


End file.
